A Little Stranger Read Online Free PDF Page A

to people I had admired on the television or had heard on the radio. I agreed with or differed so acutely from people I’d never heard of that I had to write to them. I was sheepish if they replied; by then I had generally forgotten them.
    At New Year we had a large party for tenants and employees. Such occasions are intended for the continued good relations between the hosts and their guests in the dealings the coming year must bring. Their aim is not solely pleasure. Our New Year party was our office party, but we and our guests lived on and from the office, the land, and for its cultivation, disposal, allotment, finance, maintenance and that of the beasts, people and wild things living on it.
    We engaged electricians to fill the garden with lights. We locked small treasures in the safe. John was interested in the safe, with its tubular oily bars and spinning combination disc.
    ‘Twenty children a year die in disused refrigerators on tips, and they don’t even lock,’ said Margaret. She had stopped spelling out words she considered unsuitable, since by now John could coarsely spell.
    ‘I could live nice in here,’ he said. For him, the safe was indeed the size of a house. ‘There are all stuff for eating.’
    ‘For eating off. Or with. Not for eating,’ I said. ‘Not for feeding off.’
    ‘We don’t say feed, we say food,’ said my son and his nanny, like an old couple doing a turn. The cream, silky hair grew like a star on John’s crown. The underhair was growing in grey-gold, the no-colour of wheat after the harvest and its hot moon. Margaret’s soft hair was dun; over one temple a bright comb showed its teeth. She smiled.
    ‘Do please bring your young man,’ my husband said to her. ‘We’ll be all sorts, most informal.’
     
    ‘Will you bring him?’ I asked later, at nursery tea. I would not by now have minded a more close relationship.
    ‘Who?’
    I realised I knew no name for him. I could not have been referring to anyone but her fiancé, but Margaret required clarity.
    ‘Your beau.’ She must read that sort of romance.
    She gave no reply; I might have been talking millinery. I saw clearly my own tendency to wrap up and enfold meaning, her own laudable cleanliness of mind, where all was what it seemed.
    ‘Your boyfriend. The person you hope to marry.’
    She composed her face, retrieving its features from the throes of surprise admirably quickly.
    ‘It’s very difficult; the animals he works with are very demanding.’
    ‘No more demanding than John, surely?’ I was making a joke.
    She did not appear to enjoy the suggestion that she worked with animals.
    ‘Johnny’s a real little person,’ she said, in a voice made for church.
    ‘Yes. A card,’ I replied, wondering why we denigrate what we love best, knowing it was to keep off the gods’ covetous eyes.
    I asked what she intended wearing.
    ‘Oh, that doesn’t matter,’ she replied, smiling with her cheeks. ‘What are you wearing, we all want to know? There’s talk of nothing but.’ We were back in the safe world of romance, hierarchy, display, garmentry.
    I was getting bigger and could be comfortable in only two of my party dresses. I had hardly changed size while pregnant with John. Unprepared to find myself so swollen in this second pregnancy, I showed Margaret the two frocks, pulled out from the fallow silks, discarded peaux d’oranges and ashes of faille roses in my dressing-room.
    It was to be either a wide black tent with a suggestion of jet at the shoulders, or a violet sheath with much orange lashing. Margaret liked the purple, and that decided me, as she was not loose with praise.
    ‘You can carry it,’ she said, and encouraged me to put it on to show her and John.
    I made up my face as it would be at our party, very pale, with an orange mouth and mauve eyelids. I tied a turban in my hair and tucked into its front a piece of jewellery the size of a fried egg, with two rashers of pavé rubies. My feet remained slim, so